Medicine Mountain

Sunday, January 30, 2011

It was the Quin-centennial year, 500 years since Christopher Columbus was interrupted on his quest for Asia by a hitherto unknown island. The discovery by a European of this island off the coast of what is now South America began an incredible chain of events. I don't for one moment believe that this was actually the first time a European set foot on this "New World," nor do I believe that the inhabitants of this "New World" had never before encountered people from another continent before this event. However, sometimes timing is everything. Five hundred years before 1992 was exactly the right time for this awakening to blast the world. No one could argue that at this time these two worlds saw something they had never truly seen before; each other.

It was at this time that I became conscious of the Native world around me. It suddenly popped out of the shadows into full view. I read everything I could read about the state of indigenous people all over the world and about the knowledge that our species owes to them. To top it off I had a vision in which indigenous people began to share their kinship with Mother Earth, the other beings we share this earth with and that dazed part of ourselves that still remembers who we are.

The most powerful and haunting memory of my childhood was the discovery of the Southwest as a child of twelve. The adobe and stone ruins of the Anasazi, the at that time mud and wood hogans of the Navajos, the expanse of red dust, junipers and sage totally captured my soul. But then I tried to forget this out of reach world and adapt to the world I had to deal with. All this remained dormant until the Quin-centennial.

In 1992 I had been visiting New Mexico for several years and began to focus on Taos. That autumn I decided to sell the Denver house and move. The real estate agent told us that spring was the most active season so I thought if we put the house on the market in October perhaps it would sell by spring. It occurred to me that if Creator wanted us there sooner we would be moving in soon.

We had an immediate response when two buyers made bids at the same time. In the competition we ended up getting more than our asking price and had to move within 30 days. We arrived in Taos, in a Blizzard and were immediately introduced to the trickster side of our new home. Taos welcomed us but not before putting us through some unsettling tests. I will tell that tale another time.

Just before the move I had discovered Mable Dodge Luhan in the sale shelf of the bookstore where I worked. Her sense of mission was a total shock because it was very close to a vision that I had been secreting. And then I learned that my new Taos Pueblo friends were intimately connected to Mable and Tony. It took time for the full impact of this to arrive. My new friends Joe J. and Frances Suazo knew Tony and Mable intimately. Joe's mother had been adopted by Tony who had no natural children. Joe grew up between the Pueblo and Mable's "Big House."

Last winter while living in Arizona with my partner Blue Spruce Standing Deer, the son of Joe J. and Frances Suazo I saw an article in the online version of our Taos News indicating that filmmaker Mark Gordon was making a documentary AWAKENING IN TAOS about Mabel and that he intended to concentrate on her role as a Visionary bringing the "movers and shakers," of the western world to experience Taos and the Pueblo as a model of spiritual integration with the natural world. Previous biographers and film makers generally portrayed the gossipy aspect of Mabel as a spoiled New York heiress from a decadent circle of artists and writers who brought her famous friends to Taos. This story has been hidden in plain sight for a long time. I regard it as a piece of synchronistic magic that Mr. Gordon picked up this story as a continuation of the important meeting of two world views. It is a story to be continued for the long haul. Someday we will look back and wonder how we could have missed the message from those who hold our future in their past. It brings to mind a quote from iconoclastic psychologist Fritz Perls, "in a conflict between topdog and underdog, underdog always wins." Of course he was referring to unconscious conflicts within an individual but I see this dynamic applying to the social unconscious as well. Indigenous people in their underdog situation hold the lost side of being human in this world.

This storage space holds everything there wasn't room for
In all those cramped houses I've lived in over and over again

Trying to fit into one tiny room and another and another

Now imagine mansions, lofts, studios, forest hideaways

All potential alchemical laboratories, never seen before.

Without passion there is no genuine living, just circles caught in circles that never move to the three dimensional level of life. Life moves in spirals rather than in circles.

I’m regaining my passion this year. After a long winter, the ice is breaking and droplets are trickling into promising streams. I didn’t realize how much of the water of life I’d lost over the decades. Such a long time spent just getting by waiting for a chance to live a life placed article by article on a shelf hoping for a better time. It was a lesson in how one can lose one’s soul bit by bit. It seems that birth is a lifelong process carrying us by stages to each new level of life. At any point along the way we can be still born or thrown out on an ice patch. I once saw a cartoon about a hatch-ling proud of itself for making it alive out of its eggshell, but it hadn’t yet noticed that this shell was within a shell that was within another shell ad infinitum.

When I was young I was passionate about everything. However my family was a bit intimidated by my intensity. With the help of Church and School they put a high thick wall around me. After colliding with this wall again and again I gradually I lost hope and almost lost memory of the passion for life. More accurately I hid it. I loved to dance I love to draw and paint, I loved horses and wildness, all things of mystery but these passions were frowned on in our fundamentalist family. I could only watch longingly while admiring others dancing beautifully or taking art lessons. Later I took ballet lessons on my own, learned everything I could about dance, about the forbidden beauty beyond the wall. But I was too old by then to fulfill my dream. Now I see that the enemy was fear of passion and thus fear of life. The most dangerous enemy always masquerades as a friend.

My real problem with my original people was that they had totally lost their passion for life. Although they loved me they no longer had enough life force left beyond everyday tasks to involve themselves in my interests or take my dreams and talents seriously. They wanted me to fit in, be invisible, be responsible but not dangerously responsive. They were happy to settle with just getting by. Even my low grades in school were virtually ignored. I know now that they expected that I would become honest, humble, and expect very little from life. I would graduate from High School marry a good Christian man and work as a housekeeper or receptionist. My school was in a low-income neighborhood. I realized much later that our school had teachers that were culled out of better schools and had lost their passion or never found it.

People are motivated by emotion not reason. Even reasonable arguments are designed to promote emotional responses even if in the defeated emotion of fear. Without passion nothing happens. Without passion everything that seems to happen is just a smoke screen to keep us from discovering or connecting with a passion that might make us awake from our zombie state and join in creation. Passion is necessary for a genuine connection with our Source. Without passion there is no life only pseudo life.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Here are two thinkers who have greatly added to the environmental awareness of this world even though most of the world would not recognize their names. They worked before ecology and environmentalism were recognizable names. It is my belief that a passionate thought once released into this dimension continues its ripple across time until it touches a similar vibrational ripple in others. It is never lost.

IAN McHARG: ENVIRONMENTALIST

"Man, far out in space, looks back to the distant earth, a celestial orb, blue-green oceans, green of verdant land, a celestial fruit. Examination discloses blemishes on the fruit, dispersed circles from which extend dynamic tentacles. The man concludes that these cankers are the works of man and asks, 'Is man but a planetary disease?—Ian McHarg

Back in the early 60’s I remember listening to Ian McHarg on what is now PBS. He was a landscape architect who had a passion for designing human habitations to synchronize with nature. He seemed to be one of the very few people at that time to recognize that what we do on this planet actually affects us. Our cultural bias from early Christian times has been to perceive the earth and even our own bodies as temporary and inferior forms that would be replaced by the spiritual home in heaven if we made it there. Although the spiritual aspect has largely disappeared from Western Civilization the attitude that the earth and all its resources exist merely for our use and manipulation continues to dominate our society. Money, an artificial humanly created value without genuine substance has taken over the human world and everything it touches.

We pay lip service to conservation and preservation but it is still regarded as less important than the immediate needs of commerce. Since economics is now based on constant growth and ever increasing consumption there is no way to reconcile the reality of our dependence on the environment and the artificially engendered dependence on the monetary system. On one program, Mr. McHarg and theologian Paul Tillich traced the Western attitude toward nature through the medieval dark ages when Christianity and its otherworldly viewpoint became dominant into the present as of the early 60’s. Medieval art was dominated by the Church and depicts biblical stories using nature, as a mere backdrop as if in a play for which only the protagonists are real and the landscape setting is artificial.

A quote from Chapter One of "Design with Nature" encapsulate McHarg's frustration in modern culture and the need for a nature based approach to landscape, environmental design and town planning:

"The nuclear cataclysm is over. The earth is covered with gray dust. In the vast silence no life exists, save for a little colony of algae hidden deep in a leaden cleft long inured to radiation. The algae perceive their isolation; they reflect upon the strivings of all life, so recently ended, and on the strenuous task of evolution to be begun anew. Out of their reflection could emerge a firm conclusion: 'Next time, no brains'."

In Lewis Mumford I found an amazingly creative social and planetary thinker with a passion to bring society back to its source of being. I will always remember his separation of the words organization and organism. We have organization but the organic exists in harmony with the entire cosmos whereas organization dominates rather than integrates.

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.—Lewis Mumford

In Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford, Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., New York, (1934) Mumford criticizes the modern trend of technology, which emphasizes constant, unrestricted expansion, production, and replacement. He explains that these goals work against technical perfection, durability, social efficiency, and overall human satisfaction. Modern technology—which he calls 'megatechnics'—evades producing lasting, quality products by using devices such as consumer credit, installment buying, non-functioning and defective designs, built-in fragility, and frequent superficial "fashion" changes.

If I told this story before, I apologize but I gain understanding and power through the retelling and perhaps someone else will benefit from what is in my view

miraculous. Because it is so obviously structured by another kind of wisdom beyond any normal human wisdom, I tell it to myself ever so often to keep the embers lighted. With each retelling I remember more aspects and dimensions, and yet in each retelling I realize that I have left out many important facts.

This story is about guidance from an unknown source. Whether this unknown source is from another dimension, or within, doesn’t really matter. Perhaps we don’t truly understand where we begin and another reality begins. Everything about reality as we know it and beyond what we know is continuously in motion and the oak seed can never fully understand the tree and all its branches even if it carries the whole within its essence. Yes, understanding comes from the other direction although we humans arrogantly assume we can understand our source.

I’m reflecting today on the indubitable spiritual, intellectual and practical guidance that I received in my teens and early 20s from an unknown, source. It was as if an invisible tutor and guide of extraordinary wisdom and power had been sent to guide me to my true essence at a time when I could easily have gone mad or committed suicide.

I quit school at the age of 15 in a state of despair and desperation. The dissonance between what was happening in the world outside and whatever was forcing its way to the surface of my life became overwhelming. Although it was considered a not to be tolerated disaster in the life of my family and they did all they could to put me back on track, eventually they decided it was a “nervous breakdown.” I was sent to various counselors and psychiatrists and for a short time was hospitalized. I knew that this was useless but I went along with the labeling because I had no explainable alternative.

Although I had no concept of what was actually happening to me I did know that my life and identity had changed completely. I remember it now as an upheaval so drastic that it was as if I became a totally different person without any identification with who I’d been before. I began reading history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, plus translations of ancient texts by Chinese Taoists, books of Zen Buddhism, and the ancient texts of India. In addition I explored art, the history of art and techniques of composition. The greater world opened up, as I became more reclusive.

I lived for a period in ancient times, and then the renaissance. I visited the art museum weekly and wandered the downtown area of Denver where at the time there were many used bookstores. I ventured into parts of town that were dangerous, and I explored many stances such as existentialism and atheism. I was not afraid to go anywhere because I knew that I had already died once and now I was simply exploring all the available possibilities. I wore the same pair of jeans all winter and went barefoot even in the snow. In the summer I took care of the family garden and read between changing the water between ditches. I learned to cook and sew, I already knew how to mix cement, put on roofing and square corners. Arithmetic became real when I had to measure the number and depth of folds in the drapery I was making for our new room, or install tiles in the bathroom or plan out the wall paper. No computer or calculator back then.

I was shocked to discover that all the things I had struggled with in school were actually very easy if I had a context of use and the freedom to explore. Since I was home alone I also took up cooking. I checked out a book on the history of food from the library several times. “Cooks, Gluttons and Gourmet’s” was an excellent approach to history. The nitty-gritty of everyday life in ancient times always interested me more than who was king or who conquered whom.

From behind my invisible veil I studied people on those trips downtown. I was very shy and even to pull the chain on the bus when I wanted to get off caused me to break into a sweat. I wanted to be a ghost who could avoid social contact and yet drift through it in total awareness. There was simply no place for a teenager such as myself to participate in this world, as I knew it to be.

I knew nothing about the authors I chose for reading or history for that matter. Now I remember that such words as psychology or anthropology were unknown until I began exploring these topics. My people were farmers by background and were forced to the city by the great depression. My father became a sheet metal worker with a gift for all things mechanical, and my mother worked in a City and County office. She was very bright but afraid to venture beyond the boundaries of her family upbringing. Both were immersed in fundamentalist Christianity and believed that anyone who believed differently was doomed to hell for eternity. I accepted that I was doomed, recognized that I’d been in hell almost since birth, and found myself in a strangely calm despair that moved out in all directions like ripples in the sea. It felt like a free fall into endless blackness. I had nothing more to lose.

I don’t understand why I maintained orientation and balance despite this paradoxically quiet dark horror. I sometimes wished I could go mad or die but I knew this wasn’t going to be my way out. There was a reason for what was happening even if I didn’t know what it was, and even if understanding never came. Of course this all happened before the dawn of the Internet. Everything I learned was brought before me in a magical way whenever I went seeking. I was ferociously passionate in my seeking. I only wish I had the same intensity now. Guidance surrounded my journey despite the lack of live human interaction. There was a thin layer of visibility at the top but my real life was deeply hidden. It wasn’t that I was trying to hide so much as it was that no one was interested and in fact were nonplussed and even frightened. They were happy to take me on face value as a ruined child and stay at a distance. In a perverse way this gave me a great deal of freedom to explore. I look back and realize that this journey was already laid out. I merely had to fall off the wrong path and get lost to land on my real path.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Predictably there are almost endless YouTube entries about the approaching end of the Mayan Calendar at the end of 2012. It’s as if many are looking forward to the end of the earth and life, as we know it. Do we really feel so bogged down and trapped in the humanly created perplexity of life on earth that we want even the most extreme conclusion to a drama caught by an impasse? Of course many fans of the prophecy see it as a judgement by God that will finally separate the good from the bad, the good will be somehow saved. Seldom does anyone identify with the bad that will go out in a blast of bad weather or cosmic catastrophe.

Are humans currently the enemy of all life on earth, even their own? Why do we wittingly and unwittingly destroy all that supports and sustains us? Why do we worship ugliness and artificiality so unthinkingly? Why is our society built on greed and intimidation? As a child I felt helpless rage at the total lack of feeling with which the land was destroyed and covered with ugly buildings and asphalt that then was termed progress. “You can’t stop progress,” my father would say when I ranted about what seemed to me pure evil. How can such greed, cruelty and insensitivity to everything that is alive and supports life be progress? Already I was learning that humans use words backwards. Euphemisms are lies.

I came to hate humans as the enemies of all life, even their own. But what can a ten-year-old do about anything? I fantasized wrecking all the schools and churches where such lies and false friendships were applied with the skills learned from centuries of brainwashing. And on that subject, why is mental seduction and bombardment called “brainwashing,” when it is actually brain fouling? I suppose I was terrorist material at age 10. But even then I had a counter voice within that said “hate and destruction does not cure indifference and destruction.” Somehow there was a beginning of faith in a process that stretched out in time beyond our imagining and involved processes beyond our (my) limited understanding. I came to appreciate that part of this process was my passion for life, beauty, respect, enlightenment as it set itself against ignorance, cruelty, ugliness, greed and fear.
Here we are supposedly the most intelligent of the beasts and this intelligence is used to undo the very foundations of life. As humans we build mighty systems for dealing with problems caused by those very systems. In a modern hospital, or scientific facility the powerful technology and atmosphere of authoritative knowledge is far more intimidating than is any megalithic stone god. The cures often seem lost in the rapid growth of even more pesky diseases. The more we aim technology at our problems the trickier and more complex are the problems and diseases.

Think about how sophisticated military technology has become. But the reasons for war haven’t evolved, and humans kill each other just as dead. It has been said that the next level of evolution will involve the activation of the heart chakra that connects the lower and higher chakras. Perhaps then we won’t act like gods and die like dogs.

Frequently in the movies superior technological destruction comes from power mad, greedy aliens who want to take us over because they’ve ruined their own world. But this is happening right here, no aliens involved. Of course there are many conspiracy theorists that would disagree and say that it is the aliens right here among us that are trying to take us over and hoodwink us into destroying ourselves for their benefit. But could both kinds of aliens actually be a projection of our own self-destructive activity. And does it matter if the aliens in question are from another planet, another dimension or the shadow side of this planet’s dominant species. Smart aliens can just watch us undo ourselves.

It is said in psychotherapy, that projection is the first stage in becoming conscious of the shadow self. To quote a famous 1930’s radio character, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" Unfortunately the shadow seldom moves inward from the projection screen to its true source in the mind of the projectionist. Who among us has the courage and potential for self-forgiveness to admit that they are what they most fear and loathe? This is the true magic of Christ consciousness.

We are all participants in destruction. No matter how often you visit the recycling bin, buy organic and free range food, or avoid buying from a large chain that exploits foreign workers, or serves meat grown at the expense of the vanishing rainforests the prevailing system will catch you in its net. The recycling bin will only accept what it can resell, the health food store will package its organic products individually in cardboard and plastic, adding to the mountains of trash and the rainforest continues to be depleted despite your boycott. You may even have decided to move out of the evil ugly city onto a mountain top cabin with five acres where you and like minded others are making life hard for the Mountain Lions and Bears by encroaching on their territory, which often gets them shot for your protection. It often seems that there is nothing we can do that is more effective than the relief of our personal conscience.

Is there any way out of this dilemma? What if we acknowledge our shadow and love both each other and ourselves without whitewash? What if we accept both the bad and the good as part of the human situation?
The usual answer seems to be that until we can trust the other guy it isn’t safe to let our guard down. Nothing is gained by trying to be so pure that one isn’t part of the dirt that envelops the planet. Self-righteousness never works in the long hall. Ecological purity is largely a middle-class and up choice. Few really poor people can afford to live organically unless they’ve never been touched by “civilization.” I remember the ecological movement as favored by the hippie subculture of the 60’s and 70’s. They tried to live off the land and adopt the ways of indigenous people. Of course they didn’t really know how to do this but they weren’t afraid to experiment. Having money was something to hide in that sub-culture. But the dominating cultural influences will win out in the end and every technique to counter the money driven exploitation of life is eventually absorbed by it. Once organic health-food markets were owned and used by hippies and now they are usually owned by yuppies. It reminds me of the religious takeover by the Christian Church as the vanguard of military political world domination. Churches were always built on pre-Christian holy sites. If you can’t change their minds you can always swallow them. Nowhere did I read in a history book the hidden in plain sight fact that Rome never fell; it merely put on a new face, the face of the Christian Church. I’m not attacking Christianity here, merely attempting to expose a very subtle exploitation that had nothing to do with a relationship with deity and the power of the Christ as a spiritual force. I suggest that the spiritual power embodied in the concept of the Christ is exactly what had to be stymied by the black magicians of empire. How better to do this than to swallow it and absorb it into the body of the enemy. Now this process is at work within the new orthodoxy of Scientific Materialism.

My definition of black magic is “the use of higher powers for lower ends.” This involves a continual test of purpose. It is my understanding that the actual purpose of Christ consciousness is to realize that we are involved in a constant creative process shared with the originating force of creation itself and even more amazing we are co-creators of our own world. And yet deity has a work in progress on a scale we can’t put our tiny heads around. There is a Sufi saying in reference to the work of evil: “The Devil is God’s most humble servant.” It is through our self-deception, and the deadly and cardinal sins that creation is forged. Can evil win? If it won it would have nothing to work with. Evil is not a creative force. It’s only power is to destroy the product of a genuine creative force. The devil does not create but only destroy, pervert, and hide what exists by the force of creation. And creation moves eternally. Is this not the plausible reason that children seem to be hardwired with a sense of justice? Maybe instead of the end of the world we will experience species puberty, which is the end of a familiar world.

Here is One of Many YouTube Entries on 2012

Friday, January 14, 2011

There are many realities. No one knows how many. The longer I live the more certain I am that each individual sees, feels and hears a different world. Even if they agree about certain things within their family and tribe those things are not exactly the same for everyone. This is my arrow! In the Shamanic world, the arrow travels through air, earth, fire and water and many dimensions. This year is about remembering how to be an arrow.

One of the lessons I remember from childhood, although without the strength it once had, is that reality is not singular. From this time forward I pledge to focus my attention on this awareness. What is personal reality? How separate is it from cultural reality and creational reality?

When I was perhaps seven years old I was a very lonely child. There was a particular plate that I used for every meal. That plate became a being. I don’t know when this began, or why I chose that particular
plate. It was a goldish color with a floral design. It had some wear on it and I remember a chip on the edge. Although it had been in the household a long time I suddenly chose it. I was the only one allowed to use it and I washed it myself. It took on my spirit and became a living entity in my heart. My mind knew that it was just a plate but my heart overruled my mind. There was something happening that gave me comfort and belonging. Then one day it slipped out of my hand and shattered on the floor. I was heart broken, mourned it for days and felt guilty for its demise. One night, lying in bed after all the lights were out the thought suddenly crossed my mind that in some way I had created life in that plate and that God creates us in a similar way. It was a transfer of spirit.

Scientific Materialism is the current orthodoxy and yet it isn’t supported by cutting edge scientific exploration. Perhaps a lot of the confusion arises because we humans still believe that spirit and matter are not connected. Materialism is always looking for the material explanations of life, what it is and how it started, etc. But it’s not possible for us as beings to understand our origins beginning from the low end any more than it is possible for a cell within the body to understand the whole of the body. This is starting at the wrong end. Once long ago, when my belief in the God I’d been brought up to accept was collapsing a sudden awareness quietly crept in the back door of my consciousness. It is God’s belief in us that is effective not the other way around. We are the creation of beingness beyond our understanding but not beyond our experiencing. Experience is the key word. And yet experience isn’t trusted because it can be altered by anything that effects our physical system. We can be the victims of hallucination, and so on.

But isn’t any belief a prejudice that filters out certain ideas and experiences in favor of others? In this way we are inevitably co-creators of the world we live in. Scientific Materialism has its own orthodoxy that is as limiting as the one it replaced. Concentrating on the interwoven geometric patterns on the walls of a Moorish Mosque is a quick way to experience how the mind moves among realities. The longer you focus your gaze on these patterns the more they shift and change and reveal new patterns. Is any particular pattern more correct than the others? We humans choose a particular correctness, I believe out of the need to agree on something. It keeps us from going mad in the confusion of constant flux. In this way we are creators of our own reality even if unaware of our role.

All religions have two sides. One is all about the agreed upon viewpoint that will be held and defended as orthodoxy, (including Scientific Materialism) and the other is the invisible but life giving link to the underlying creative chaos. The essential nectar of the Gods and power of creation seeps up from the hidden side. Right now I’m struggling to find words to express the essence of being and am immediately faced with both the magic and limitation of words. Isn’t this a metaphor for all structures? Structure is stricture. Nothing can be caught and harnessed in the mind without words and yet words alter and tame the very reality they attempt to catch. The force of being itself comes from the hidden, feared underside. And yet that is of little use to us if we don’t catch it and render it immobile for that moment it takes to put it into perceptible form.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

I had an argument, i,e, discussion with my honey this morning about our very different styles of dealing with the habitual complaints of a friend about the relationship she's in. He feels he has to do something about it and get it resolved because she brings it up in conversation a lot, but I feel that it's not my place to fix it. In fact this is a typical example of our different ways of coping with the things that go on around us. He is impatient with drivers over each deviation from correct driving standards and I seldom think about other drivers except to respond automatically to their behavior out of self defense. I don't expect to cure them. I do notice if something really off the chart happens as it often does here in Taos, but I don't expect to fix them. He wanted to be a policeman when he was younger and I wouldn't want to have to pay such close attention to every detail about other drivers. I would find it exhausting. I'm an introvert and he is an extrovert. Not surprising, huh?

He wants our relationship to be almost perfect by his standards and gets restless if a high level of relating isn't maintained while I like to slide now and then because I have other parts of life that pull my attention from time to time.

My devotion isn't pulled away its just that in my psychic house there are other rooms to attend to now and then, but I never forget about him and stay pretty focused on his needs. He on the other hand expects me to be very sensitive to his state of mind and heart and he watches mine like a cat watches its environment, sensitive to every move. I rather automatically adjust to his moods and movements and he watches to see if I do.

Sometimes I see him as a spoiled prince and he sees me as a wimp that doesn't ask for what she wants and allows people to shit on her. He thinks the world out there is probably up to no good and its important to be cautious and think defensively. I think if you expect something bad to happen it probably will. On the whole I've been pretty effective in putting up a protective screen. Now and then I fail but life goes on. He sees a failure in security as a loss of points in the game of life. I don't like games.

The reality is that he is often very insightful about what is going on with other people and gets right to the point. He would make a good therapist. But sometimes he gives therapy when it isn't wanted. He feels a personal responsibility to do something about everything out of balance that crosses his path. I too make a pretty good therapist because I see behind the outward actions to the underlying motives. I can get pretty straight on too, but tend not to do so when I detect that the person in question is not interested in doing anything about it.

The reality is that he is very good in an emergency, very clear headed and is often down right generous and courageous. Strangely enough so am I. I must admit that he is quicker to stop on the road if he detects the possibility that someone is in trouble and do whatever he can to help, whereas I might think about it first. We are almost opposites but there is a hidden recognition that we are very much alike as well. Its just that the style of presentation is quite different.

The reality is that he often accuses me of not sharing my feelings with him. Its true, I usually take notice of my feelings and trace them back to the origins before I share them. He on the other hand often announces an action he is going to take and assumes that he has shared the reason when usually he hasn't. He thinks I automatically know why he does what he does. Sometimes I do, simply because I've been there before.

The reality is that he makes quick decisions in a moment of generosity or enthusiasm and I think, "maybe, lets wait and see how it all shakes down". He backs out a few days later after thinking about it and decides it may not be such a good idea after all.

The reality is that he flings a tough, "I put myself first, and I don't take shit from anyone"attitude out in the world. He brags on himself and takes compliments with total agreement but nevertheless feels delighted when someone really understands what he's trying to express. He encourages and admires others who are in the art business. He always tries to support local business people and friends and expresses a lot sympathy for others trying to make it on their own. I've noticed that he will go out of his way to encourage someone he identifies with even when he can't afford it. He sees it as a tithe to the spirit of those who are trying to do their best. I on the other hand am far more worried about money or the lack of it, and I tend to doubt how others perceive me.

The reality is that he is a romantic and I used to be a romantic. Hmm, do you really believe that? True, it's more complicated than that. He strives to maintain the romantic outlook and I strive to keep it in check.

I'm also thinking of how his Aquarius Sun, Virgo Moon and Sagittarius rising relates to my Gemini Sun, Cancer rising and Cancer Moon conjunct Jupiter. There is a lot more to it than just these characters of course. We are certainly not two peas in a pod but we aren't the opposites we seem to be either. Its a bit more like the two sides of a Pendleton blanket. The pattern is reversable on each side.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Most of us don’t notice the injustices and downright evil that support our lifestyle if we are comfortable enough to remain oblivious. The key word is enough. So much of our modern lifestyle is supported by shadowy evils on the periphery of awareness. I suppose it is our responsibility to stay informed and aware of whatever is casting the shadow, but the quantity and complexity of the systems that support us physically engender an overwhelm response that results mentally and emotionally in a fuzzy numbness. How can one possibly deal with all the things that need to be fixed? Most of the time we do what we can to placate our conscience knowing that we are barely touching the issues in our world that need to be fixed.

I’ve been receiving a number of contribution campaigns in the mail each week from one charity or another asking for a pledge of money. I notice the same style on all of these mailings. They enclose a free gift of address stickers and a notepad and then if I don’t respond it upscales to a calculator, pen, or cheap polyester blanket. Once in awhile it is a T-shirt. I quit giving to these charities when this style of appeal began. I wonder about how much it costs to pay for such a mailing campaign. I’m sure it keeps some people employed but the assumption behind this promotional style irks me. It assumes that I won’t give for no-thing, and that guilt will motivate me to help pay for the promotional costs. Even the local PBS channel has taken this up. I used to give to several Native American organizations that provided (or so they said) food and heat for the elderly and various types of help including education for the young but now I think about how much help could be provided for the cost of these unwanted pieces of junk. Although I can’t take it off my income tax as a charitable contribution I prefer to give to people in my immediate environment that have a need.

There is a Tarot Card in the Rider-Waite deck that personally strikes a dissonant cord. It depicts a wealthy man giving alms to the poor who are kneeling beneath him in gratitude dressed in their rags. This is the interpretation given by James Rioux http://www.ata-tarot.com/resource/cards/

The Six of Pentacles often represents the first of these two situations, when it is your generosity that is being (or should be) expressed. Now that you have lived through the darkness long enough to see the inner light, it is time to help others who are not so fortunate. The generosity of the Six does not limit itself to money and material things, though the focus is on those because it is a Pentacle card. Giving of your time or your wisdom is often just as spiritually fulfilling as giving away money or gifts, and the intangible gift of your presence is received just as well, if not better.

There are limits on helping, however. It is pointless to give so much that you ruin yourself, and it is equally pointless to give a person so much that they become totally dependent on you. That is the purpose of the scales, which offer the qualities of discrimination and fair judgment as they relate to generosity. To paraphrase Marx, give according to your abilities, and according to the needs of others. And if too many people start asking for your help it is not forbidden to draw a line! Do not make the mistake of half-heartedly helping everyone when you can do a better job helping a few.

I don’t believe that creation is something that happened eons ago, and I don’t believe that there was once a state of perfect balance that was destroyed by some disobedient human action that occurred at the very dawn of the conscious human relationship with the creator. I do believe that creation is a work in progress and that each step begins with the loss of a previous balanced state. Even to walk requires that a static state of balance be sacrificed for the next step. It is also possible to fall backward and to fall on ones face. But these are aspects of becoming and each backward slide or forward fall brings knowledge to those who have discovered the power of learning as a significant part of the creative adventure.

Consciousness is never total but continuously evolving. Typically individual consciousness tends to be at a higher level than mass consciousness. But sensitivity to the state of others is an ongoing project and a necessary part of personal as well as social evolution. Perhaps this is another way of saying that the intention is as important as the action when it comes to personal responsibility. The idea that getting money even for a “good” cause by manipulating a guilt response in others or even the greed response, if a tax deduction is involved is another way of saying, “the end justifies the means.” Instead I believe the end will always reflect the means and a lack of heart in any fund raising campaign will enable the state of consciousness that is responsible for the very problem it is attempting to correct.